DOVER -- The former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party is spearheading a new group backing immigration reform.

Dover resident Fergus Cullen recently announced the formation of Americans By Choice, an advocacy group pushing for new policies that include a guest worker program and a path for some illegal immigrants to remain in the country legally.

With a new political consensus developing in Washington D.C. around immigration reform, Cullen said he hopes the group will be able to create space for conservatives to take pro-reform positions in the coming months.

“For too long, the most public voices on immigration on the right were those that were very strident and, typically ... anti-immigrant,” he said. “The message they were sending was ‘We don’t really like you. We would really prefer that you to go back to where you came from.’”

Americans By Choice is seeking a designation from the Internal Revenue Service as a non-profit advocacy group, known as a 501(c)(4). The group has a “center-right” political tilt, and has drawn support from many business leaders who are naturalized Americans, Cullen said.

It also enjoys the support of some Democrats, Cullen said, including former New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman George Bruno, who served as U.S. Ambassador to Belize under President Bill Clinton.

Immigration reform has surfaced as a wedge issue among Republican voters in both of the last two presidential cycles. In 2008, candidate Mitt Romney invoked immigration to turn primary voters away from John McCain, Cullen said. And Romney followed the same playbook while facing a primary challenge from Texas Gov. Rick Perry last year, he said.

Inflammatory rhetoric on immigration has hurt the Republican party’s image, Cullen said, citing the experience of his own parents, who were Irish immigrants.

“When I hear the rhetoric that sometimes is used by too many Republicans, I could hear how jarring it would be to people like my parents, and also millions of voters,” he said.

Reforming immigration could be a boon to conservatives, but Americans By Choice is primarily focused on policy rather than politics, Cullen said.

The group is backing reform in three major areas. The first is an overhaul of the country’s visa program. Currently, a quota system based on nationality restricts the number of immigrants who are admitted into the country, Cullen said. He’s calling for reforms that would help highly-educated workers stay in the United States -- particularly those with expertise in science, technology and engineering.

Similar proposals have already won support among both Democrats and Republicans.

“That’s the low-hanging fruit,” Cullen said.

The group is also calling for a new guest worker program, which would primarily accommodate low-skill workers employed in fields like agriculture and the hospitality industry.

The group’s third policy proposal is a “pragmatic and reasonable approach” to resolving the residency status of the millions of illegal immigrants in the country.

Many on the left have called for Congress to offer immigrants new pathways to citizenship. Americans By Choice hasn’t adopted that position. Instead, the group is pushing for measures that would allow immigrants to gain legal status without being granted full citizenship.

Citizenship rights, such as voting, are “not high priorities” for many illegal immigrants who are already in the United States, Cullen said.

The question of citizenship is among the most contentious issues facing lawmakers in Washington this month.

In the wake of last year’s presidential election, both the White House and Congress have developed a new concentration on immigration reform issues.

In his State of the Union address last week, President Barack Obama renewed his call for sweeping legislation that includes a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of eight senators has been meeting to develop a bill that accomplishes eventual citizenship for illegal immigrants while also containing enough border security and enforcement measures to gain conservative support.

The leadership of Americans By Choice includes Manchester immigration attorney Ron Abramson, who served as the state’s Commercial Consul to Chile under Gov. John Lynch. Abramson is also a founding board member of the group Vote Now New Hampshire Hispanics. He became an American citizen after leaving Chile as a teenager.

Also active in the group are: New Hampshire State Rep. Marilinda Garcia, a Salem Republican; Kristina Lenzi, a Barrington resident and Lithuanian native who has worked in two U.S. embassies; and Marian Noronha, founder and president of Turbocam, a precision manufacturing company based in New Hampshire.

Cullen said Americans by Choice is keeping a national focus, and working now to raise funds. He doesn’t anticipate that the group will be active in funding political campaigns, but he left the possibility open for the future.

“If there are Republican candidates out there in primaries who think it’s to their political advantage to use nativist, jingoistic, anti-immigrant rhetoric, I have no hesitation about calling them out on that ...” he said. “It’s wrong on the policy, and it can’t be tolerated. And in addition to that, it’s been terribly damaging to the Republican brand.”